


Side B

by Rosabella98



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-04-04 02:23:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14010108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosabella98/pseuds/Rosabella98
Summary: There are many versions of every story, and these are all the versions that this story is not.





	1. Chapter 1

            In one version of this story, Mary, Queen of Scots and King Francis II never met at all. The poison at the convent slips past the taster, and the young Queen of Scots never returns to the French Court.

            In a well-known version of this story, Mary, Queen of Scots marries Francis, the Dauphin of France as a teenager. Their time together is brief, a flash in the pan. Some say they lived apart, kept apart by the Dauphin’s frailty and sickly condition, or due to their youth. Others say they loved each other passionately, recklessly, too much, with all the innocence of a first love that blossomed into something more. All agree that their time was too brief, barely more than a year and a half of marriage before Death separated them forevermore. Some say it was an ear infection that carried off the King, others say that he recovered only to die a short bit later defending his young wife.

Whichever way, in this version, the young golden King of France, Francis, the second of his name, dies before his twentieth birthday, leaving his country in turmoil and a young widow, also still in her teens, mourning the love of her life in a tenuous political position. Some say that Mary, Queen of Scots never loved another man the same way, that her heart remained behind in France, six feet underground with her golden dead husband, whilst she returned to her native Scotland for the first time since childhood. No one can say what was truly in her heart, except that the young widow became hard, wounded by the world’s cruelty at such a young age, and never again enjoyed the peace she’d enjoyed during her youth in France.

In this version of the story, Mary, Queen of Scots buries two more husbands and is forced to abdicate the throne that she’d occupied since six days after her birth in favor of her young son, whom she named for the father that she never knew and never sees again. This Mary spends the rest of her life, fifteen long years, in a cold castle in the English countryside, her cousin’s political prisoner. She never sees the wild moors of Scotland again, nor her beloved French countryside again. She loses her head alone, her only friends the dark grey stones of Forthingay Castle and the rosary that had come with her all this way, all for the inconvenience of being a figurehead, a Catholic Queen with a claim to an English throne held by a Protestant Queen who could no longer afford having a rival who still inspired loyalty among her enemies.

Yet, in another version of this story, it is King Francis that dies with his head on a block. This Francis lived to maturity, only to lose his throne and his head in a Protestant uprising led by his Bourbon cousins after seven years on the French throne. In this version of the story, Francis and Mary have more time together, but barely. After a year and half of marriage, Mary, Queen of Scots falls pregnant with the heir that two countries had been anxiously awaiting. The French Court rejoices, and all of Scotland breathes a sigh of relief, their future forever entwined with the power across the sea. In this version of the story, Mary doesn’t miscarry the long-awaited heir. Mary and Francis spend nine months preparing and planning out the future of their child, created out of their love, and the two teenagers envision a dynasty that joins two proud countries for the next thousand years, born out of the love they shared.

But even in this version of the story, fate isn’t ready to allot Mary and Francis their dreams of shared lives for long. The birth is long, and hardous, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is young and strong, and so after 36 hours of labor she births the long-awaited heir, James, Dauphin of France and Duke of Rothsay. In the excitement around the young prince, the midwife waits to attend its mother, too long. Within a few hours of the young prince’s birth, Mary lies shivering of childbed fever, her young golden husband clasping her hand, begging for her to fight her way back to him and their son. Her body, however, is weak, too weak from fighting to bring their son into this world, and two days after delivering her beloved child, Mary, Queen of Scots lies dead from childbed fever, leaving behind a bereft husband and a young son who is now the King of Scotland. Her son follows her to an early grave within a week, dead of a sudden fever. They bury her clasping her child in the France of her youth, far away from the Scotland of her blood, and the young golden king ages ten years the day they put his wife, his light, his heart, and his son into the ground. King Francis II of France never smiles again, and goes to lay his head on the block six years later with an otherworldly calm, ready to join his missing pieces.

In version after version of this story, fate interferes and irreparably separates Mary and Francis too soon, before they’ve had a chance to grow old, to flourish, to reach their potential for greatness together. Fate is cruel to King Francis II of France and Mary, Queen of Scots, and not even the fact that in each of these versions just Mary loved just Francis more than life or reason. But fortunately for all, in this version of the story, none of fate’s cruel tricks intervene, and for once, the story of Mary and Francis unfolds as it was meant to all along.


	2. Beg and Plead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so I've decided to give actually writing this story a try. I can't promise regular updates, or that I've got a plan with where I'm going with this, but I'll do my best. So here's chapter two

            Once upon a time, a girl loved a boy, and a boy loved a girl. If only this story were that easy.

            There can be no once upon a time, not for our Mary and Francis, because in no version of this story were they ever just Mary and Francis, a boy who loved a girl and girl who loved a boy. In every version of this story, their love story starts because of a political alliance. Scotland and France, two countries traditionally allied, the two thorns in the side of England for centuries, symbolically joined together at last. With that, as in every version so far, come responsibilities and burdens, complications and obstacles, all which seek to keep our Mary and Francis apart. In most versions of the story, they succeed, but we’ve already said this is not that version.

Certain events are so fundamental, so written in the tale of a person, that they must happen in every version of the story. Mary leaving court for the convent, their initial rocky courtship and the prophecy, their wedding and the first miscarriage, Francis’ ear infection, every version of this story must include these moments to be recognizable.

Except, in this version of the story, the miscarriage happens when Mary is slightly farther along in her pregnancy – still just after their coronation as queen and king of France, but a month or so after the christening of Lola’s illegitimate child, when Mary is just about beginning to show. More people had been told, but no official announcement had been made, as it was still early, too early. In that month, Mary had spent more time than she would have wished bent over a chamber pot, emptying the contents of her stomach fine dinner after fine dinner. Francis had paced helplessly, holding her hair back and wiping her brow with a cool cloth, unable to help his wife as her strength diminished with her inability to keep food continuing. Everyone from midwives to his mother tried to ease his worries, shield him from Mary, but Francis would have none of it.

“My love,” he whispered against her hair, one night, after another hour of holding her as she bent over the chamber pot in her fine blue and gold ball gown, ignoring the ambassador from Portugal that they were meant to entertaining. “I wish there was anything – any one thing at all – I could do to save you from this pain”

“I swore to love you and protect you in front of our families and friends, in front of France and Scotland not that long ago, and now I am the cause of your pain and sorrow,” he said, unable to stop a tear or two from falling into the thick dark mass of her hair, as he continued soothingly stroking her back.

Mary turned in his arms at that, but weakly, without the usual strength that he’d come to expect from her. Her eyes still blazed, with indignation and that power, that mix that was all Mary. “Francis, never say that. This is our child, ours, a little piece of our love for always. I would suffer this every day and a lot worse for you and our baby.”

Francis held her tighter, kissing her forehead before tucking her head under his chin, in that way that they always fit as if they were created that way. Two puzzle pieces, meant to fit together and balance each other out.

Unfortunately, there are some things that can never be changed. Mary miscarries their first child in this version of the story too, but it’s much different. In every other version, Mary is young and strong, and miscarries the child incredibly early, with few physical side effects. This Mary is still young, but much weaker, the pregnancy having begun to take a toll on her, combined with the leeches that the court doctor had begun to treat her with as the symptoms of miscarriage had progressed. This Mary hovers between life and death for three days, never gaining full consciousness after a vicious fever ravages her body after miscarrying their child. Francis doesn’t leave her side since the first signs of blood appeared on her thighs, trusting his mother to take care of the kingdom.

Three long days pass, in which Francis mourns for his unborn child, ripped from his mother’s womb, but also for the love of his life, who lies as still as death on the same bed where days earlier they had been trying to pick out names for their child. A small part of Francis thinks, during these long, long days, that he hates the child a bit, for hurting Mary, for potentially taking her away from him forever, and he hates himself too, for being the one to get her pregnant, the one who put her in harms way when he was the one meant to protect her from all ills. Instead, helpless, he waits by her side as she fights her own battle to find her way back to him, and just prays for more time, one more minute, one more second, with his Mary.

Bash, Catherine, even Lola, try to get their king to eat, to sleep, to leave Mary’s side even for a minute for his own health, but all falls on deaf ears. Francis’s world has become the confines of their bedchambers, the weak rise and fall of Mary’s chest, his ears straining to ear her breathing, to reassure himself that she’s still here, still with him. Catherine then takes on the task of ruling both France and Scotland, Bash is dispatched to take care of Narcisse and the Protestant problem, Lola becomes both mother and father to her small child. France and Scotland may be on the verge of losing their queen, but if they do, they may lose their king as well.

And then, all of a sudden, things take a turn for the better. After three days, Francis had fallen in a fitful doze, his head cushioned on his arms on the bed by Mary’s side, still sitting in the chair where he had kept his watch for the past 72 hours. He misses Mary’s eyes opening for the first time, but her gasp as her hands go to touch her womb and her sobs as she realizes its emptiness are enough to stir him.

“Mary! Oh, Mary” he exclaims as he snaps from dozing to alertness, crushing her in his arms perhaps a little more forcefully than he should, but he can’t contain his relief at seeing her awake, at knowing that she’s going live, that he has something to live for still.

“Our child, Francis, I lost our child,” Mary sobs into his shoulder, her body half on the bed and half supported by him.

He lets her sob, letting go some of the tears he didn’t know he still had in him into her dark hair as he strokes her head, her back, everywhere he can touch to remind himself that his Mary is still here. “I know, my love, I know.”

In this version too, Francis tells Mary that she’s his light, murmurs it in her hair, in between featherlight kisses on her forehead, on her cheeks, on her hair as he holds her until her sobs are spent. Here, however, he adds, “I thought I was going to lose you, Mary, and I couldn’t bear it. I could lose a hundred children, but losing you would break me. No child, no dynasty is worth not having you in my arms, in my bed, at my side on the throne and in every walk of live.”

“I love you, Francis,” Mary replies as she tugs him back onto the bed with her, tucking herself him with her head under his chin and her body wrapped around his, before she succumbs to sleep again, her body still healing from her fever.

“I love you, Mary,” Francis replies to her sleeping form, both his arms wrapped tight around Mary, before letting sleep claim him, and actually sleeping for the first time in three days. That’s how servants find them the next morning, the King and Queen of France, entwined around each other, Mary in her nightgown showing the signs of her illness, and the Francis still wearing the clothes he had worn throughout his long vigil. But, for the first time in a while, they both look peaceful.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure if anyone is still writing for Frary lol, but I just discovered this show and I'm crazy for them. I just couldn't get this little piece out of my head and so I wrote it, but I don't know if anyone would want to read more if I were to expand beyond this, so please let me know!


End file.
